Thursday, 28 March 2013

Lemony Lamb Shoulder with Potatoes en Papillote

With Easter coming up, I thought I'd share one of my all-time favourite recipes for feeding a crowd, and a dish that appears in my cookbook. For over fifteen years this heavenly dish of slow-cooked, fragrant, fall-apart lamb has been my preferred choice for a feast. I used to serve it with rustling golden roast potatoes but, as it's very rich, these days I pack tiny spuds in baking paper well ahead of time, sling them in the oven and bring the packets to the table all puffed and golden and painted with cheering messages.

A large bone-in lamb shoulder will feed six hungry people, but not eight, so I suggest you order two smaller shoulders, which will leave you with plenty of leftovers. If you have a second oven, you can bake the potatoes at 180 °C; they will take 30-40 minutes.

Paint a message on each parcel using a fine paintbrush or calligraphy nib dipped in soy sauce. If you're not confident about your penmanship, print out the words in a font of your choice, then lay the baking paper on top and trace them with a soy-sauced nib.

What I love about this recipe - apart from its sticky-skinned succulence and unbeatable aroma - is that you can prepare it well in advance and leave it to do its sweet thing in the oven while you skip through the meadow gathering Easter eggs.

Heat the oven to 150 °C. Cut any large blobs of fat off the lamb. Finely grate six of the garlic cloves, place in a bowl and stir in the salt, lemon zest, 1 Tbsp (15 ml) of the oregano and the olive oil. Using a sharp knife, pierce the thick parts of the lamb (top and bottom) in 8-10 places, at a diagonal, to a depth of 3 cm. Push a little garlic paste deep into each cut and rub any remaining paste over the top of the joints.

Put the onion slices and remaining garlic cloves into a large roasting pan and place the lamb on top. Sprinkle with the remaining oregano and plenty of black pepper, pour in the wine and lemon juice and cover tightly with two layers of heavy foil. Place in the oven. After 3 hours, remove the foil, turn the heat down to 140 °C and switch off the oven fan. Season the lamb with salt, to taste.

Roast, basting now and then with the pan juices, for a further 1 hour, or until the lamb is brown and sticky and falling off the bone. Top up with more wine and lemon juice if necessary: the liquid in the pan should be about 1 cm deep.

For the potatoes, cut out eight circles of baking paper, each the size of a dinner plate. Prick the potatoes and divide them between the paper circles. Season with salt and pepper and add a knob of butter, a sprig of thyme, a sprinkling of lemon zest, and any other flavourings you fancy.

Fold each circle in half to make a semicircle and tightly seal the edges by making small, overlapping pleats all the way round. Brush the tops of the parcels with melted butter and place on a baking sheet. An hour before you’re ready to serve the lamb, place the parcels in the oven and bake for the remaining time or until quite tender. Lay a bed of flat-leaf parsley on a large platter and place the lamb on top.

Cover with foil and allow to rest for 15 minutes. Pour the juices from the pan into a small jug and skim off the fat. Serve hot, with the potato parcels, and pass the pan juices round in a jug.

This is another great post in this nice blog...and the recipe and the pictures make my mouth already watering...I really can't wait to try this at home...if I will have time to go grocery shopping tonight I'll definitely try it already today. I'm sure this tastes absolutely amazing...I like lamb meat, love to try new recipes and it also doesn't seem too complicated (which is good because I'm not really a master chef :D) If you have a recipe like this but the only thing that keeps you from doing it is the foreign language it is in commission a professional translation agency for the translation so that you won't miss out on a delicious dish.Professional translation agency